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Quentin Tarantino on the Psychiatrist Scene in Psycho

posted a year ago by ecarle (14979)
6 replies | jump to latest

I was gifted Death Proof for Christmas. What a sweet holiday confection.

That's the one that QT concedes is his "worst film" while noting that its still better than a lot of films. (This was said of Hitchcock on Torn Curtain: 'bad Hitchcock is better than 90% of the best of everybody else.)

Except QT wasn't old and ill like Hitchcock when he made Death Proof. He was just misguided.

The concept was to make Death Proof as the second bill of a "fake" 70s exploitation bill: Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror(zombies) was the other one. (Fake trailers at the intermission included one for "Machete" which became two movies.)

The double bill and trailers package was called "Grindhouse." I saw it and loved it on release in 2007. Well, I loved Death Proof. Well, I LIKED Death Proof. It had a lot of young women in it, and the bad news was that QT wrote them all a LOT of dialogue to say to each other and, I'm sorry - it just wasn't very good dialogue. For QT.

The movie has four great big benefits:

ONE: Kurt Russell, from out of his "cult movie" past (Elvis, Used Cars, Escape From New York, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China) to here play a psycho -- a serial killer named "Stuntman Mike" who uses his "death proof" stunt car to kill young beautiful women. Some he rams car to car. One, he lures into the stunt car for a ride home -- and instead slams her around at high speed and quick turns in the hard steel walls of the crash car until her head is reduced to bloody mush.

TWO: A final car chase that EASILY matches up with the greats -- Bullitt, French Connection, Vanishing Point -- and the lesser known "Stunts"(with Robert Forster, natch.) Filmed in the same area AS Stunts.

THREE: A great end credits sequence in which a bopping girl rocker song called "Chick Habit" somehow accompanies eerie "color timing photos" of various women, circa 1960s/1970s. You have to see/hear it to enjoy it.

FOUR: Rose MacGowan as Stuntman Mike's first victim. Before her bloody demise, Ms. McGowan is a blonde, curvy, sweet, sexy and electric female character -- one is reminded that the angry activist lady with the shaved head of today was once a va-va-voom type with lots of hair on her head...and a good actress. Some bad things happened to her.

OK..so on the "Making of" doc on the DVD, QT reaches the part of the movie -- right in the middle, where, says QT, I put in "What I call my Simon Oakland scene in Psycho."

He continues: "You know what that scene is, right? Its where somebody comes on screen to tell us exactly what we have already seen, and explains it."

Ah, QT I must send you the "three things that the shrink scene in Psycho tells us about the plot" memo. But I won't. Because it turns out that QT LIKES the Simon Oakland scene because he found -- with Death Proof -- that HIS Simon Oakland scene was absolutely necessary.

HIS Simon Oakland scene finds one of his favorite actors, Michael Parks as "Sheriff Earl McGraw" strolling a hospital corridor with his "Son Number One," played by Parks actual son, James Parks -- who would go on to play the stagecoach driver JB in The Hateful Eight.

They are in the hospital because Stuntman Mike is in the hospital, recovering from the"accidental car crash" that killed four young women(but what of the FIFTH who died in his car? Plot hole) and left him with survivable injuries.

Sheriff Ed gets some of that really good QT dialogue(and why didn't the women get it?) to explain to Son Number One that he is certain that the car crash was murder -- intended by Stuntman Mike to kill all the women without killing himself, himself only sustaining minor injuries.

And why commit the murders? (Which, Sheriff McGraw notes, includes the thrill of "taking four souls at the exact same time." ) Well -- to get a sexual thrill (McGraw is graphic and funny about this) while extracting punishment on women.

So we not only have a Simon Oakland scene here -- we have the Frenzy discussions(in pub and police station) about a "criminal sexual psychopath."

We have seen Sheriff McGraw in other QT films -- same actor, same character -- in Kill Bill and in From Dusk Til Dawn. He's a welcome presence here, but just as impotent as in the other films. He tells Son Number One that he cannot arrest Stuntman Mike "but I can make damn sure he never tries this again in Texas."

CUT TO: A new state. Title card: Tennessee. And Stuntman Mike goes cruising for new women to kill with his death proof car. But these women will fight back -- see: "Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill."

QT elaborates in the documentary that while he didn't originally want to include an explanation of why Stuntman Mike kills women, he found that he had to, and he wrote it, and it was interesting(especially delivered good ol' boy style by Michael Parks.)

Which, I daresay, ends up placing QT's own stamp of approval on "the Simon Oakland scene." Which was also necessary to say some things that we had NOT already seen.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) a year ago

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

It still kills me that people freak out over the Simon Oakland ending. It's honestly not that horrible and makes sense given the period in which PSYCHO came out-- I have seen so much worse in lesser films.

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That's right. I suppose its a bit like Martin Balsam's "process fall" down the stairs in Psycho -- we KNOW its a process shot, but as process shots go it is incredibly well done..so many process shots of the time are wrong in proportion of actor to screen, position of the actor, reality of the actor's acting, etc. The proof is in the pudding: director Anthony Perkins' attempt to restage a character falling down the same stairs in Psycho III...THAT process shot is HORRIBLY done, all wrong. (Gus Van Sant got it right with his staircase fall for William H. Macy in the Psycho remake...but he was following Hitchcock's design exactly.)

And so it is with Simon Oakland's explanation scene. Yep, many others have been done and were done(Joan Crawford gets the honors at the end of William Castle's Strait Jacket, actually written by Psycho novelist Robert Bloch -- and its not very realistic.) But the Simon Oakland scene is VERY well written by Joe Stefano.

There is the vital plot information I have described in the past. (It wpuld have been narrative negligence NOT to tell us Norman murdered mother and her boyfriend -- it had to come out SOMEWHERE.) But there is also the "flow" of the speech:

ONE: Confirm to Sam and (especially) Lila and the authorities: yes, I'm sorry, Marion is dead , the private investigator too(Suspense is finally ENDED for Lila, and for Sam, and for US. We wanted them to know.)

TWO: The horrific back story of Norman Bates ("You have to go back to when Norman murdered his mother and her boyfriend"..BOOM...right up front.) The "campfire horror story" of Norman's first murders, digging up the corpse, stuffing, it, gutting it...we get a whole NEW horror movie...in our minds.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

THREE: Then talk about how Norman's psychosis worked -- this part seems to bug our more high falutin critics -- is this scientific psychology? Or just mumbo jumbo?

Both, seems to me. And entirely understandable -- sexy Marion aroused Norman's sexual desire, that triggered the jealous mother and "mother killed the girl." Makes sense, yes? (Though others say -- "Wait a minute, is that what REALLY happened? Maybe Norman KNEW he was the killer, wanted to rape and kill her -- like the killer in Frenzy -- but could only stab her.)

Well...that makes this explanation scene more interesting still..its not necessarily the ONLY answer.

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I've always like the anecdote that when Simon Oakland finished that long speech(imagine the pressure on him, with Hitchcock right there and all those pages to remember), Hitchcock shook Oakland's hand and said "Thank you for saving my picture." A clue that this explanation scene was also necessary to shut down the censors.

There's some grand irony about this, all these years later:

Psycho began as a movie famous for ONE scene...the shower scene. Which took seven days to film and last 45 seconds.

But now Psycho is famous for TWO scenes. The shower scene and the psychiatrist scene...which took ONE day to film and runs about five minutes.

Just last week, there were a few articles about Psycho hitting Number One on the Variety "Greatest Films" list, and one of the writers wrote: "I agree that Psycho is a great choice for Number One...even if it has that ridiculous psychiatrist scene at the end."

No respect.

Except from me. And some others...

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

An addendum:

In addition to the great "structural writing" of the psychiatrist scene(Oakland covers a lot of ground methodically and gets it all said), there is strength the the dialogue/monologue ITSELF:

"Matricide is the most unbearable crime of all...most unbearable to the son who commits it."

"Now, Norman was never only Norman...but he was often only Mother." (The key to everything, Marion and Arbogast are talking to MOTHER when they insult her to Norman.)

"When the mind houses two personalities, there is always a conflict, a battle. Well,in Norman's case, the battle is over, and the dominant personality has won."

Who got the 40,000?

"The swamp. These were crimes of passion, not profit."

All very well written.

[–] Martoto (4142) a year ago

It's amazing that nobody has presented a a fan edit to prove that clipping that scene un-ruins the end movie and how it's completely unnecessary. It should be simple enough and the results would be absolutely conclusive. Just about veryone who's seen it is so confident the movie would have been better without it.

It's like everybody going round saying that a Martini would be so much better without the olive but nobody ever serves or drinks a Martini without one.

I think people like subtly bragging to others about how they didn't need a shrink telling them what they've just seen (He isn't. He's telling the victim's sister and the police involved) more than they actually dislike the scene itself.

And the truth is that the information is necessary. But necessity is actually only half of what's being served by that scene.

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

It's amazing that nobody has presented a a fan edit to prove that clipping that scene un-ruins the end movie and how it's completely unnecessary.

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Exactly. And I know that I've said this forever here(but I will continue to do so) but the shrink is NOT JUST talking about Norman's psychosis(that takes up maybe the final third of his speech.)

He is SOLVING a mystery, he is doing something REQUIRED at the end of a mystery story.

Mother did NOT murder her boyfriend and then kill herself. NORMAN killed mother and the boyfriend. And the movie kept alluding to the "wrong story"(from Norman to Marion, from the Sheriff to Sam and Lila) and the RIGHT story needed to be told.

And my two other points: explain how Norman's taxidermy hobby related SPECIFICALLY to his stuffing of his dead mother's corpse ("I'm as harmless as one of those stuffed birds.") Explain how Norman/Mother killed OTHER women. He was a serial sexual psychopath.

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Also, Hitchcock ends some powerful suspense here: we get to see Sam, and especially Lila, FINALLY learn that Marion is dead (to which I'll add -- wait'll they find out HOW Marion died. They'll have nightmares for life, especially Lila!)

We DO have a "fan edit" of the psychiatrist scene: its in Van Sant's 1998 remake of Psycho in which Robert Forster plays the shrink in rather too sleepy and bored a key. Runs about half the length, takes out the part about transvestism, doesn't play at all.

That scene was too well structured and written to take anything out without losing its "campfire horror story" feeling and its information about Norman Bates' personal history.